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enFinding Delhi: Loss and Renewal in the Megacityhttp://elevatedifference.com/review/finding-delhi-loss-and-renewal-megacity
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<div class="author">Edited by <a href="/author/bharati-chaturvedi">Bharati Chaturvedi</a></div><div class="publisher"><a href="/publisher/penguin-india">Penguin India</a></div> </div>
<p>New Delhi is a city that has undergone many incarnations in its lifespan. Just a century after the British built the city to be the capital of the crown jewel that was India, Delhi is racing towards becoming a world-class city. Published on the eve of the city’s hosting the October 2010 Commonwealth Games, which was supposed to serve as Delhi’s coming out party in the twenty-first century, the collection of essays in <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670084832?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0670084832">Finding Delhi</a></em> explores what happens to the lives of its twenty million inhabitants as the city is re-engineered and re-imagined for the new millennium.</p>
<p>What happens to people who are driven out from the urban city centers, the places where they ply their trade, to live on the outskirts of town? What happens when public spaces are increasingly replaced with private malls and coffee shops, spaces that are no longer free to everyone? Who has the right to public spaces? Is it just the middle and upper classes, or do all inhabitants of a city possess this right?</p>
<p>Environmentalist and Delhi-based writer Bharati Chaturvedi attempts to answer such questions. The co-founder of <a href="http://www.chintan-india.org/">Chintan</a>, an NGO that works to increase environmental justice and reduce ecological footprints, Chaturvedi makes <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670084832?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0670084832">Finding Delhi</a></em> unique by <em>not</em> assembling the usual cast of urban planners and educated intellectuals to discuss the city’s metamorphosis; she brings us the voices of fourteen full- and part-time residents, ranging from environmental activists to “urban-sector” workers, street vendors and other entrepreneurs who have contributed to Delhi’s vibrant formal and informal economy for centuries and risk being erased from the glittering new city streets and urban edifices that are being planned for New Delhi. Each chapter reflects the unique voice and opinion of these diverse individuals.</p>
<p>In her introduction Chaturvedi discusses how in the not-so-distant past it became fashionable to characterize what she terms “work on the greens” as being detached from the reality of the poor, but, as she aptly points out, the greening of the environment is also of importance to the working poor: “Lamenting the loss of tree cover in Delhi, an itinerant vendor remarked during a meandering conversation, ‘I miss all the trees now. I used to enjoy looking at the leaves and my mind used to become fresh even in the heat of summer.’” Chaturvedi notes that the idea of a green city came up over and over again in numerous conversations she had with residents who are considered the working poor of Delhi.</p>
<p>In the chapter “Remaindered Things and Remaindered Lives,” contributor Vinay Gidwani asks the reader to consider what happens to their discarded gym shoes and introduces us to Mundka, a township on the edge of West Delhi that Gidwani dubs a “site of reincarnation not just for Delhi’s detritus, but the entire world.” Gidwani describes a recycling industry that operates in an almost subterranean fashion, including the 150,000 to 200,000 <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCajmHtEOdI">ragpickers</a> who make a living sorting and selling recyclables that are found in Delhi’s garbage. He points out that Delhi produces 7,500 tons of garbage daily. A large amount of this is recycled by the ragpickers, who are very poor and work in hazardous conditions.</p>
<p>Because Delhi’s focus is on the formal-sector economy, city officials view these workers as unskilled and not contributing to the retail economy, but Gidwani contends that the informal sector workers provide an array of services that enable formal sector workers to continue their privileged lifestyle—from vegetable vendors to cycle cart pullers who deliver appliances, or grocers who deliver bulk orders to households. He contends that Delhi today is inhabited by two “eco-classes.” He notes, “On the one side, a way of life that churns out growing quantities of waste; on the other, lives that live off this commodity detritus.” Gidwani asks the reader to consider what a different city Delhi would look like if the ruling elite actually learned to recognize and value the important contributions that these marginalized people and places make to their daily lives.</p>
<p>In “Women Reimagining the City,” Kalpana Viswanath discusses the harassment and violence that women encounter on a daily basis in the city; she writes that “being a woman in Delhi is often an intimidating, frightening, worrisome and, at the least, uncomfortable experience.” She points out that although Western cities were historically viewed as male spaces (hence the term <em>streetwalker</em> to describe women who walked the streets alone at night), developing urban areas also provided female friendly spaces in the form of department stores, tea rooms, and promenades. Viswanath notes that class plays a significant role in a woman’s experience in Delhi.</p>
<p>Delhi does not fare well when it comes to gender equity indicators; only seven percent of the Delhi police force are women, and according to recent crime data, Delhi accounts for thirty percent of reported rapes in India’s largest cities. Taking public transportation in the city exposes women to potential harassment and abuse, and Viswanath indicates that no women are immune to gender-based violence by highlighting the highly publicized murders of young women of privilege. She closes by writing, “The big challenge will be to transform people’s attitudes towards women as citizens with equal rights.”</p>
<p>I found <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670084832?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0670084832">Finding Delhi</a></em> to be one of the most thought provoking books I’ve read in a long time. Some books have a profound effect on how one thinks about their world and this is one of those books. The topics and issues discussed are not unique to Delhi; cities across the globe are increasingly having to balance the need for economic and industrial growth without losing the sense of humanity and culture that gives a city its soul. It is a delicate balancing act and one that can benefit from each person playing an active role in re-imagining their cities and interconnected destinies.</p> <div>
<span class="reviewer-names"><strong>Written by:</strong> <a href="/reviewer/gita-tewari">Gita Tewari</a></span>, January 15th 2011 </div>
<div class="tag-list">Tags: <a href="/tag/urban-planning">urban planning</a>, <a href="/tag/india">India</a>, <a href="/tag/gender">gender</a>, <a href="/tag/delhi">Delhi</a>, <a href="/tag/class">class</a></div> </div>
http://elevatedifference.com/review/finding-delhi-loss-and-renewal-megacity#commentsBooksBharati ChaturvediPenguin IndiaGita TewariclassDelhigenderIndiaurban planningSat, 15 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000mandy4440 at http://elevatedifference.comBeautiful Thing: Inside the Secret World of Bombay's Dance Barshttp://elevatedifference.com/review/beautiful-thing-inside-secret-world-bombays-dance-bars
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<div class="author">By <a href="/author/sonia-faleiro">Sonia Faleiro</a></div><div class="publisher"><a href="/publisher/penguin-india">Penguin India</a></div> </div>
<p><em>Beautiful Thing</em> is an eponymous title. It is journalist Sonia Faleiro's first book, about the dancers and not-so-secret prostitutes of the “dance bars” of suburban Bombay (Mumbai). These now-illegal establishments offered the tripartite pleasures of alcohol, enticing women, and Bollywood music. Their dancers were “bootiful” young girls, sometimes in their initial teenage years, and well aware that their “booty”—pun unintended—is what defines them, and keeps them fed and clothed.</p>
<p>But this free-market beauty of Faleiro's informants and the women in their lives—mothers, daughters, sisters, wives of their lovers, their <em>hijra</em> (male-to-female intersex, transsexual, or transgender) friends—is what dehumanises them into things. Beautiful things. Things that entertain, things to watch, things to make money with, things to rape, things to give as gifts, things to show off, things to have sex with, things that produce meals, things to punch when the world tightens the screws.</p>
<p>And their eternal tragedy is that their beauty fades, usually by the grand old age of thirty, but their essential <em>thingness</em>, their perceived worthlessness as anything other than beautiful and sexually available women, remains.</p>
<p>And yet Faleiro's informants are neither cowering nor desolate, nor are they subaltern heroines, stiff-upper-lipping the world. Her guide to “the secret world of Bombay's dance bars,” Leela, came to Bombay at fourteen to escape her abusive father's pimping. More infuriating than him selling her virginity to local policemen for a gang-rape at the station, she said, was his refusal to give her the money she earned. Bombay was much better. She could get money just for dancing, relative freedom to choose “kustomers,” and pretty things from men who admired her. Even weekends at expensive resorts. Although the bar owner took the greater share of the money men threw at her, she made enough to live in luxury. If she was forced to "go" with a patron, he was usually a mafia boss, and there was both privilege and profit in sleeping with them.</p>
<p>The histories of the other dancers are all riffs on the same general theme. They come from poor families with too many mouths to feed and little money to do it with. They were prostituted from puberty, and the injustice of being the broke and abused breadwinner nagged them till they decided to start working for themselves in the big city. In their first months several were tricked or forced into brothels, in conditions harsher than home, but most escaped—Leela by jumping out of a window—and found their way to a dance bar. For all the politically-motivated moral outrage directed at these ostensible destroyers of the social fabric and disgraces unto womankind, the bar dancers of Bombay were amongst the tiny minority of poor, illiterate, victims of abuse who managed to win a measure of independence and happiness without institutional intervention, and no social capital apart from their “bootiful” faces.</p>
<p>In fact, if one manages to look past the scene-stealing women, <em>Beautiful Thing</em> is a chronicle of total institutional failure. From “family” and “community,” to the state legislature for banning their “immoral” profession (in open defiance of their Constitutional right to live and work without prejudice), to law-keepers who extort, rape and get free blowjobs from this suddenly-unemployed or illegally-employed demography, these women have been let down by every institutional holy cow. The only place that lends them space—at a price—is the underground nexus of police, politicians and the mafia that “really” runs Bombay. And even then it is a faceless, substitutable existence amongst a steady influx of fresher, younger girls.</p>
<p>Yet, despite the horror, anger, frustration, pity and even guilty relief (there, but for the grace of god...) that one might feel about the dancers, their defining moment comes, fittingly, at the end. Leela, having lost family, job, home, savings, and friends, is about to be smuggled into Dubai without a passport, ripe for every kind of abuse and exploitation imaginable. To reassure a nervous Faleiro, she points to her own smiling face and asks, “Do you see fear?”</p>
<p>And Faleiro has to admit she doesn't.</p> <div>
<span class="reviewer-names"><strong>Written by:</strong> <a href="/reviewer/rimi-nandy">Priyanka Nandy</a></span>, November 26th 2010 </div>
<div class="tag-list">Tags: <a href="/tag/prostitution">prostitution</a>, <a href="/tag/poverty">poverty</a>, <a href="/tag/india">India</a>, <a href="/tag/bollywood">bollywood</a></div> </div>
http://elevatedifference.com/review/beautiful-thing-inside-secret-world-bombays-dance-bars#commentsBooksSonia FaleiroPenguin IndiaPriyanka NandybollywoodIndiapovertyprostitutionFri, 26 Nov 2010 08:00:00 +0000barbara4347 at http://elevatedifference.comThe Monochrome Madonnahttp://elevatedifference.com/review/monochrome-madonna
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<div class="author">By <a href="/author/kalpana-swaminathan">Kalpana Swaminathan</a></div><div class="publisher"><a href="/publisher/penguin-india">Penguin India</a></div> </div>
<p>For the last year or so now, I have been avidly pursuing murder mysteries by an Indian author or with an Indian connection. Some have turned out very good, and some were simply tolerable. The latest in this genre to fall in my way is <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143104187?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0143104187">The Monochrome Madonna</a></em> by Kalpana Swaminathan (of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9380032544?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=9380032544">Kalpish Ratna</a> fame). I approached the book very positively, having read much praise of their work, but I have to confess that <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143104187?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0143104187">The Monochrome Madonna</a></em> left me feeling let down.</p>
<p>First, a quick outline. <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143104187?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0143104187">The Monochrome Madonna</a></em> is a "Lalli mystery"; Lalli being an aging detective who has retired from the Bombay police. For much of the novel, however, Lalli is away, and it is her niece Sita (not <em>Seeta</em>, she reminds you, though I still can’t tell the difference) who is stuck with the corpse and the sleuthing.</p>
<p>Sita is all at ends, and the involvement of Ramona, a friend’s suicidal teenage daughter, doesn’t help. The couple in whose flat the corpse is found are an odd pair, and for much of the novel, it is not clear what any of the characters are thinking. It is only upon Lalli’s return that things start falling into place... slowly.</p>
<p>Part of the reason the book didn’t appeal to me much is the somewhat florid language. Especially in the first half of the book, everything is simile, and rather outlandish ones at that.</p>
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<p>Festive in a hot pink and purple <em>chaniya-choli</em>, she looked like a designer candle, solid, waxy, sequined. Besides I didn’t like her voice. It rang like a coin at the end of every sentence, metallic, definite, with an exact sense of its value...The scalp had unfurled like a scarlet hibiscus, trailing sticky pistils of bloof all over his matted hair...There was a light bulb up there. It made the maw of that low space smoulder like a sulking volcano.</p>
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<p>All this within ten pages, by which time I was wishing the book had a ruthless editor who would’ve chopped off the verbiage. This is part of the reason why, at 250 pages, the book feels too long.</p>
<p>The other (and perhaps larger) issue with <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143104187?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0143104187">The Monochrome Madonna</a></em> is that the plot itself is too slow for a mystery. For long stretches, nothing much happens. Even when Lalli returns and things start happening, we are not given much insight into the motivations of any of the characters. There are interesting digressions, and Sita is the one character who comes out strongly etched, but it isn’t enough to make up for the somewhat vaguely written and numerous other characters.</p>
<p>At the end of a mystery novel, I like to be able to plot together a logical outline and trace how the author has led up to a certain ending. It is no fun to feel that character A could as well have been the murderer as B, and the only thing preventing that was the author’s whim. I guess what I’m saying is that the reader needs to be able to work with the detective and at the end feel that the culprit had the best possible motive and opportunity. With <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143104187?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0143104187">The Monochrome Madonna</a></em>, this doesn’t happen, and the end feels quite arbitrary. To me, this is the worst sort of thing one could say about a murder mystery.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://apusworld.com/blog/2010/10/the-monochrome-madonna/">Cross-posted from Apu's World</a></em></p> <div>
<span class="reviewer-names"><strong>Written by:</strong> <a href="/reviewer/aparna-v-singh">Aparna V. Singh</a></span>, November 14th 2010 </div>
<div class="tag-list">Tags: <a href="/tag/mystery">mystery</a>, <a href="/tag/murder">murder</a></div> </div>
http://elevatedifference.com/review/monochrome-madonna#commentsBooksKalpana SwaminathanPenguin IndiaAparna V. SinghmurdermysterySun, 14 Nov 2010 16:00:00 +0000mandy4309 at http://elevatedifference.comThere Was No One at the Bus Stophttp://elevatedifference.com/review/there-was-no-one-bus-stop
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<div class="author">By <a href="/author/sirshendu-mukhopadhyay">Sirshendu Mukhopadhyay</a></div><div class="publisher"><a href="/publisher/penguin-india">Penguin India</a></div> </div>
<p>The twelve hours that pass in this slim novella are some of the slowest and hardest ever—both in the lives of the characters and for the reader as well. Set on one day in the lives of two people in a not-so-secret affair, <em><a href="http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/category/Fiction/There_Was_No_One_at_the_Bus_Stop_9780143067733.aspx">There Was No One at the Bus Stop</a></em> builds the strained context of their lonely lives, takes you to a point of emotional climax, and then holds you there just a few pages too long, leaving you tired and frustrated. But that’s the price you’re going to have to pay for a deepened understanding of human relationships, it seems.</p>
<p>The form of the novella works well to create, in very few pages, the story of Trina and Debashish. It explores the reasons for the dissatisfaction in their lives, their growing loneliness, and an inability to limit their relationship to one corner of their brittle lives. Debashish’s young son expresses a wish to live with his aunt after his mother’s death, and we witness Trina’s painful alienation from her entire family. To make the decision to live together, to take comfort in the love they have found, seems like the simplest and most obvious yet, at the same time, most difficult thing to do. Over the day, we see their actions, hear their thoughts, and watch them tremulously step over boundaries created by society and themselves. We are frustrated by them, saddened, and made to feel oppressed by the walls closing in, even when they try to escape from within them.</p>
<p>It’s not entirely clear if something in the story is lost in translation (from the original Bengali), but the characterisation in the book—especially of Trina—prevents it from working, entirely. I felt a strongly misogynist undertone, despite efforts to understand what was going on in her mind. Trina appears to us in bits and starts, first as an attractive, vivacious, and intelligent woman, strikingly drawn against her background of middle-class ennui. Before you know it, however, this image shifts to one that is sad, guilt-ridden, and self pitying, the object of impatience and revulsion of her family. Since we remain mostly at the realm of the emotional throughout the short narrative, we don’t have much in the way of explanation as to how her personality changes, or why most responses to Trina are so extreme.</p>
<p>This portrayal of Trina as so self loathing and whinging takes away from the insight the author seems to be making about the complexity human relationships, and it grossly overplays the guilt and shame of a woman who has found love outside of what seems to be a cruel and intolerable family. What we end up with in <em><a href="http://www.penguinbooksindia.com/category/Fiction/There_Was_No_One_at_the_Bus_Stop_9780143067733.aspx">There Was No One at the Bus Stop</a></em> is a very disturbing sense that, although cracks and loneliness there may be, there are no good reasons to step out of the all-powerful institution of marriage.</p> <div>
<span class="reviewer-names"><strong>Written by:</strong> <a href="/reviewer/disha-mullick">Disha Mullick</a></span>, September 18th 2010 </div>
<div class="tag-list">Tags: <a href="/tag/novella">novella</a>, <a href="/tag/love">love</a>, <a href="/tag/bengali">Bengali</a></div> </div>
http://elevatedifference.com/review/there-was-no-one-bus-stop#commentsBooksSirshendu MukhopadhyayPenguin IndiaDisha MullickBengalilovenovellaSun, 19 Sep 2010 02:00:00 +0000mandy4153 at http://elevatedifference.comTiger Hillshttp://elevatedifference.com/review/tiger-hills
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<div class="author">By <a href="/author/sarita-mandanna">Sarita Mandanna</a></div><div class="publisher"><a href="/publisher/penguin-india">Penguin India</a></div> </div>
<p>We used to argue as young literary critics that it wasn’t possible to have feminist romantic writing: the terms were contradictory by their very definition. Love stories were necessarily fissured by unequal relations of power, vulnerability, and injustice. This has always been troubling to me, as a diehard romantic, a firm believer in love stories, and a feminist. It was a niggling worry, too, as I read, and was instantly absorbed in, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446564109?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0446564109">Tiger Hills</a></em>.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446564109?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0446564109">Tiger Hills</a></em> spans over fifty years, in the lovely region of Coorg in south India—from the last few decades of the nineteenth century until the buildup to the Second World War. It follows the destinies of two large clans from neighbouring villages, but the fulcrum of this epic novel is surely Devi. The story follows her life, from the heavily symbolic moment of her birth, and evolves around her relationships with three men: Devanna, who becomes her close friend and almost-sibling when his mother returns to their village from her marital home, and then dies; Machaiah, the larger-than-life "tiger killer" of the neighbouring Kambeymada clan; and Appaiah, Machaiah’s son. These individuals and their passions for each other, inextricable from the physical and cultural landscape of Coorg (belonging in the novel is almost always used interchangeably for person and place), form a gripping and emotive narrative.</p>
<p>The story would not be without Devi, and yet ironically, its three parts are named after the men in her life. The beauty of the story lies in the way fate, a strongly patriarchal family and custom, and the foreclosing of choices for Devi over and over again are interrogated by Devi’s own will and restlessness with her situation. At points in the story she recedes into an overly romanticised backdrop, and yet, the crucial turns the plot takes are when she emerges from this passivity, and fights for spaces and moments of happiness. What also keeps you drawn to the narrative is how the characters grow and change, both with tumultuous events that happen in their lives but also, subtly, with the movement of time and the accumulation of hurt and loss. So Devi’s changing relationship with Devanna is quite fascinating to follow, from close friendship to bitterness and repulsion, and these must intertwine in the end to reach a point of acceptance, despite painful past circumstances.</p>
<p>An excessiveness in language and plot notwithstanding, and a thinning hold over the reader’s attention, especially towards the last third of this expansive novel, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0446564109?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0446564109">Tiger Hills</a></em> is a love story that absorbs you. It makes you angry when Devi—so willful, ostensibly strong, and controlling—seems trapped in her own life, giving in to the silences that patriarchy necessitates, and not articulating the injustices she suffers. But if it is frustrating, it also reflects our own love stories. and seems to understand the complexity of relations that come with love: the intense vulnerability, the often painful negotiations we make along the way, and the tenuous hold we ever have on happiness.</p> <div>
<span class="reviewer-names"><strong>Written by:</strong> <a href="/reviewer/disha-mullick">Disha Mullick</a></span>, September 16th 2010 </div>
<div class="tag-list">Tags: <a href="/tag/patriarchy">patriarchy</a>, <a href="/tag/novel">novel</a>, <a href="/tag/love">love</a>, <a href="/tag/india">India</a></div> </div>
http://elevatedifference.com/review/tiger-hills#commentsBooksSarita MandannaPenguin IndiaDisha MullickIndialovenovelpatriarchyThu, 16 Sep 2010 10:00:00 +0000mandy4152 at http://elevatedifference.comThe End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetitehttp://elevatedifference.com/review/end-overeating-taking-control-insatiable-american-appetite
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<div class="author">By <a href="/author/david-kessler">David Kessler</a></div><div class="publisher"><a href="/publisher/penguin-india">Penguin India</a></div> </div>
<p>Obesity and the health issues that accompany it have long been a subject of intense discussion in the Western world, where the abundance of super-cheap and highly processed foods has been linked to many health disorders. David Kessler’s <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1605297852?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1605297852">The End of Overeating</a></em> is an important addition to the books written on the subject. Kessler has the background to take on this complex subject, having served as commissioner at the US Food and Drug Administration. He is also a man who has grappled with weight issues, giving him a more personal interest in the topic.</p>
<p>One of the biggest strengths of <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1605297852?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1605297852">The End of Overeating</a></em> (and the reason I called it an important book) is that Kessler articulates convincingly a position on obesity that moves it away from the issue of individual control and choices ("if you’re fat, you have no willpower, and you really ought to control yourself"). While for a large part of America calorie intake is outpacing calorie absorption, he acknowledges that it’s not as simple as "having the willpower to say no." Kessler also acknowledges that a small percentage of obese people are obese due to other medical reasons and that "hypereating" is not restricted to obese people.</p>
<p>Kessler advances his position by taking a close look at the food and restaurant business, and how it gets consumers to eat larger portions, eat more often, eat at any place, eat at more locations, eat more indulging foods, and eat mind-blowing combinations of fat-sugar-salt that make us want to, well, eat some more. He also goes to some length to explain how overeating can become a habit by conditioning and by altering the stimulus-reward circuits in the brain. By indulging in high calorie foods, which offer a temporary but pleasurable sensation, we are primed to remember those sensations the next time we come across the same stimulus.</p>
<p>If all this sounds esoteric, think of a food experience that you particularly crave—perhaps a burger at a particular fast food joint or a particular brand of chocolate—and think about how hard it is to turn away from the treat it promises. That is what Kessler is talking about, and <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1605297852?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1605297852">The End of Overeating</a></em> helps us to understand why we don’t just ’say no’. The first three sections—"Sugar, Fat, Salt," "The Food Industry," and "Conditioned Hypereating Emerges"—are all about dissecting the problem, and are the strongest parts of the book.</p>
<p>One quibble is that Kessler sometimes stops short of covering an individual’s story in sufficient detail, preferring to move on to the next of numerous chapters. One also suspects Kessler would have done well to stop with his thorough analysis of the problem rather than extend the book to offering solutions as well. The sections "The Theory of Treatment," "Food Rehab," and "The End of Overeating" are somewhat disappointing in their generality when compared with the rigorousness of the first half of the book. While there are a few useful suggestions, they don’t go beyond what common sense suggests, nor are they buttressed with any studies or other information on their efficacy. They also veer dangerously close to the "you can stop eating if only you try" approach that Kessler disses in the first half.</p>
<p>Despite these drawbacks, <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1605297852?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1605297852">The End of Overeating</a></em> is an interesting read for anyone who has struggled with weight or with the expectations of desirability in an increasingly appearance-conscious world. Those of us living in India can already see the wholesale import of Western brands and lifestyles into what was a slower and more wholesome way of eating. For us, it may be the "Beginning of Overeating," but that is no reason we shouldn’t be better prepared.</p>
<p><em><a href="http://apusworld.com/blog/2010/08/the-end-of-overeating/">A longer review can be found at Apu's World</a></em></p> <div>
<span class="reviewer-names"><strong>Written by:</strong> <a href="/reviewer/aparna-v-singh">Aparna V. Singh</a></span>, August 14th 2010 </div>
<div class="tag-list">Tags: <a href="/tag/diet">diet</a>, <a href="/tag/food">food</a>, <a href="/tag/health">health</a>, <a href="/tag/obesity">obesity</a>, <a href="/tag/united-states">United States</a>, <a href="/tag/weight-loss">weight loss</a></div> </div>
http://elevatedifference.com/review/end-overeating-taking-control-insatiable-american-appetite#commentsBooksDavid KesslerPenguin IndiaAparna V. SinghdietfoodhealthobesityUnited Statesweight lossSat, 14 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000admin389 at http://elevatedifference.comDreams in Prussian Bluehttp://elevatedifference.com/review/dreams-prussian-blue
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<div class="author">By <a href="/author/paritosh-uttam">Paritosh Uttam</a></div><div class="publisher"><a href="/publisher/penguin-india">Penguin India</a></div> </div>
<p>For a long time, it seemed to me as if all Indian writers in English wrote “serious” things—complicated stories, language that needed some getting through, “big” themes, weighty tomes. And then came <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0552773867?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0552773867">Chetan Bhagat</a> and the many followers in his footsteps, who unleashed upon us a spate of poorly-written novels, mostly to do with engineering institutes and adolescent angst. It seemed as if one could either have five-star hotel caviar or roadside vada pav; if you weren’t in the mood for the first and couldn’t stomach the second, poor you!</p>
<p>Luckily, times are changing. In the last couple of years, Indian writers in English are attempting every possible genre, including murder mysteries and graphic novels. There is a growing market for well-written, yet easy-to-read fiction, which is probably why Penguin has brought out a new series, Metro Reads, dubbing them “fun, feisty, fast reads.”</p>
<p>One of this series, Paritosh Uttam’s <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143066811?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0143066811">Dreams in Prussian Blue</a></em>, would probably not qualify for the "fun" bit, given its somewhat serious story, but it fulfills the rest of the criteria. <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143066811?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0143066811">Dreams in Prussian Blue</a></em> is the unconventional love story of art college dropouts, Naina and Michael. The novel sticks to a small group of characters and does that well—while Michael is the anti-hero, Uttam takes the reader to the darkness behind seemingly "nice" and bland characters as well.</p>
<p>The bonus is that while the story is novel and the characters real, the language is simple enough for the average reader. A live-in relationship, a selfish artist, a naive young woman who realizes that love and fresh air may not be enough, the Indian art world, nosy neighbours and traditional parents who can no longer hold on to their children—the plot moves forward quickly, and kept me engrossed wanting to know what happens (and plenty does!). The dialogue works too, with the lingo of the twenty-something crowd captured well.</p>
<p>It so happened that the last few weeks, I’ve been snowed under work and reluctant to take on anything too complicated. <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143066811?ie=UTF8&amp;tag=feminrevie-20&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=0143066811">Dreams in Prussian Blue</a></em> fits perfectly into that sort of mood—when all you want is a good story.</p>
<p>**Review by **</p>
<p><em>Cross-posted at <a href="http://apusworld.com/blog/2010/06/dreams-in-prussian-blue/">Apu's World</a></em></p> <div>
<span class="reviewer-names"><strong>Written by:</strong> <a href="/reviewer/aparna-v-singh">Aparna V. Singh</a></span>, June 24th 2010 </div>
<div class="tag-list">Tags: <a href="/tag/fiction">fiction</a>, <a href="/tag/love">love</a>, <a href="/tag/novel">novel</a></div> </div>
http://elevatedifference.com/review/dreams-prussian-blue#commentsBooksParitosh UttamPenguin IndiaAparna V. SinghfictionlovenovelThu, 24 Jun 2010 16:01:00 +0000admin2932 at http://elevatedifference.com